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Gnome, thin theme, and firefox
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 26 Sep '05

26 Sep '05

Hi Folks, Can any of you suggest a solution to the following irritation? I'm running Red Hat 9 on a somewhat low-powered laptop, using Gnome. I have changed the Gnome "theme" to "Simple" ("Thin appearance, hign performance") and it does indeed make a noticeable difference to performance. (Thanks, by the way, to a suggestion made many moons ago by Dave Gilbert which I came across while doing some housekeeping of old email). However, it has had one irritating side-effect. I normally use Firefox as browser now, since it is much lighter and snappier than the Mozilla which came with the distribution. But, when I click on "Bookmarks" and the list of bookmarks drops down (black text on grey background), as I track the mouse down the list the bookmark the mouse is over at any moment is "higlighted" (ironic quotes) by being made completely blank (just a white rectangle, no visible text). This was not the case before, using the default Red Hat Gnome theme ("Bluecurve"), where the highlighting simply set a lighter grey background and the text remained visible. Nor does it occur now if I use Mozilla instead of Firefox, since the highlighting sets a blue background instead of the unhighlighted grey, and the black text remains visible. Of course the Mozilla is the one that came with the Red Hat distribution, so may have been customised, while the Firefox is one I installed myself; so there may be some explanation there. I can't find anything in Firefox "Edit -> Preferences" which deals with this issue. Though this does not render Firefox unusuable (you just have to remember to read the text before the mouse comes to it) it does make it more awkward, and is certainly irritating! Any suggestions? Best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 26-Sep-05 Time: 09:23:26 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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NTLworld broadband & contract???
by Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 26 Sep '05

26 Sep '05

Hi Folks, A query which some of you may be able to resolve! A friend of mine, whose phone is already on an NTL line, has just had a cable modem installed by NTL for broadband via an NTL cable. The leaves them with the NTL CD awaiting insertion into their computer to initiate the setup and establish the broadband connection. So far so good. However, this comes with a contract (I don't have the full wording avaiable) on the lines of "By using the software you agree to ... " -- all sorts of things, including assigning to NTL (as "IAP") and "its suppliers Motive Communications Inc." the right to obtain information from their computer and make changes to settings on their computer; and furthermore to waive all possible claims against NTL, Motive, *AND*MICROSOFT*, and anyone else that NTL sees fit, relating to practically anything that one might normally expect to be able to claim for, The contract also grants NTL/Motive the right to "send information to your computer" and "upload changes", and enters into a commitment to "accept upgrades". For the most part the scope of these things is completely unspecified and the contract, as worded, seems to be an agreement to leave an open door to NTL and their buddies to extract any kind of information and use it for any kind of purpose, as well as arbitrarily interfering with the computer itself. In couple of places there is explicit mention of "changing internet related software", in particular a thing called "The Motive Client Foundation", and of the user supplying "information such as name (etc.)" [note "etc."]. While one might shrug ones shoulders and say "Well, in practice, all they're doing is ensuring they will be able to keep a decent service running", the broadness of the wording -- while in principle allows the providers to do what they like in the way of extracting information from the computer and using it any way they like -- is disquieting. Does anyone have comments on this? By the way, my friend also has a Linux installation so theoretically could use this instead of the Win98 which the CD is provided for ans which they normally use. Is this likely to prove workable? Presumably the software on the CD encapsulates settings and configurations whose details would need to be known before a Linux box could be set up "by hand" to do the job. And, in any case, it may be that if the "IAP" detects a "non-compliant" system then their servers may simply decline to cooperate. It all seems a bit of a black hole, and I don't myself know enough about what goes on here to give any advice (other than having the same impression that the contract "gives too much away"). Either or both of accounts of reassuring experiences/horror stories will be welcome! With thanks and best wishes to all, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 25-Sep-05 Time: 14:30:45 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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NTLworld broadband & contract???
by Christopher Dawkins 26 Sep '05

26 Sep '05

> From: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> > > A friend of mine, whose phone is already on an NTL line, has just had a > cable modem installed by NTL for broadband via an NTL cable. The leaves > them with the NTL CD awaiting insertion into their computer to initiate > the setup and establish the broadband connection. So far so good. Amazing coincidence. I am facing the problem that my daughter has just moved in with four others to student lodgings in a house with a freshly installed NTL cable modem, which is working well to the single XP machine that has been plugged into it and configured by NTL's CD. I spent a frustrating afternoon trying to connect other machines, including my daughter's FreeBSD box, to it. Having now googled, I am sure I failed because the modem is tied to the MAC address of the first machine to connect. It would presumably be in theory possible to set up ICS on the single working machine for the others to use - better from my POV to set up NAT on the FreeBSD box for the same purpose, with a wireless card to share the connection - but the physical constraints (lodgers not allowed to drill holes and my daughter's room being one floor above the hallway where the connection is) mean the only viable solution will be to upgrade the cable modem to a wireless router. But NTL's website doesn't mention wireless routers. Is there anyone with an NTL cable-connected wireless router? If I buy a wireless router independently, is it easy to connect it to the cable modem in place of the current XP machine? Any recommendations on a suitable wireless device? Can I persuade the cable modem to accept the router's MAC address? Will the router, which presumably expects an ADSL input, be readily configurable to the cable modem's ethernet connection? And what are the chances of me managing this operation by telephone from a hundred miles away? Very many thanks to Paul for his comments and links too: > http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d.h.walker/cmtips/register.html > http://www.chetnet.co.uk/articles/index.php?page=index_v2&id=60&c=14 > Regards, Paul. I have been browsing around them and related links. There are good "manual registration" instructions there, but these are four years old and I think I will still have the MAC address problem. Many assume the cable modem is handing out 192.168.x.y addresses, but the working machine had an address 81.106.210.x/24. I did connect our BSD machine to it though a switch, configured it to an adjacent address and was then upset to find it couldn't ping the XP machine. Or the "defalt gateway". I now realise that the XP machine probably had a default firewall, bother it! And the router was probably not accepting the BSD machine's MAC address. Bother it! Concerning Ted's contract reservations, isn't this sort of thing standard practice? The last time I read the small print on an airline ticket (flights can be very boring) I got the impression that they were under no obligation to fly me anywhere anytime. And NTL are welcome to inspect my BSD boxen as much as they like, they need both a wheel and a root password to get in. -- Christopher Dawkins, Garnetts Corner, Braintree Road, Felsted, Dunmow, Essex CM6 3DS 01371-821076, mobile 07816 821659 cchd(a)felsted.essex.sch.uk

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 26 Sep '05

26 Sep '05

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. Historically, these used to be the only time a lot of us would be about, now the channel has some usual faces that are there most of the time (except at silly o'clock, when we might be sleeping, or on the second thursday of the month, where we might be drinking in the Reindeer), so don't feel limited to visit during this time, come visit us when ever you feel like it! The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.alug.org.uk in the #alug channel. Most IRC clients should allow you to get there with the commands "/server irc.alug.org.uk" and "/join #alug". Popular IRC clients include xchat, irssi and EPIC on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.xchat.org/ http://www.irssi.org/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

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text manipulation
by Peter 25 Sep '05

25 Sep '05

Hello everyone. How do you scan a text file in the following way? It will have multiple occurrences of a label in sucessive records. For instance: ****newrecord**** *TTTT lorum ipsem *TTTT feugiat, ullamcorper *RRRR suscipit dolor..... *RRRR fuerat inscipior *SSS nunquam alebit ****endofrecord**** This is how it actually is - the labels are all in caps preceded by *, the start and end of the records are indicated as shown, and each line consists of a field label followed by field content. I am trying to make this into a csv file for import into another database, but am having problems because the number of identical field labels varies from record to record. The starting database appears to have allowed the user to create any number of identically labelled fields. So the number of fields in a record varies from 30 to 50, and there can be 5 -10 duplicate field labels in any record. It is several thousand records in size. The problem is to go through the file, and remove only the second and subsequent occurences of a label, putting the content from the second and subsequent records in the record with the first instance. So in the above example, you apply the process and end up with *TTTT lorum ipsem feugiat, ullamcorper *RRRR suscipit dolor fuerat inscipior *SSS nunquam alebit Once the file is like this, it will be simple to go through and change the carriage returns into tabs, and then do the import. I realise that uniq will find duplicates, and that tr will do replaces, and that you can probably pipe one into the other...or use GAWK? But can't seem to figure out how exactly to make them all do exactly this. My main problem is how to just delete the second and subsequent duplicate labels, instead of either all occurrences of the label, or the whole record with the duplicate label. Any ideas? Regards & thanks in advance to anyone patient enough to help. Peter Berrie

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Help - CM120 C-Media USB Card Reader
by Tim Green 25 Sep '05

25 Sep '05

Hello, I bought an interestingly cheap USB memory card reader last week. It works fine in Windows but I'd rather having it working in Linux. The card reader is based on the C-Media CM120 chip. I say based on - there is only the one chip on the little circuit board. If you think you can help, you can read the output of "lsusb -v" in my journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/spodlife/90240.html I am running Debian Sarge with kernel v2.6.8, and looking ahead to the more recent kernels there is still no official support. Any ideas? Cheers, Tim.

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When df & du disagree (wildly)...
by James Green 25 Sep '05

25 Sep '05

Hi all, Spot the bleedin' obvious: jmkg@s1c1:/home$ sudo du -csh 64G . 64G total jmkg@s1c1:/home$ sudo df -h /home Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda7 124G 105G 13G 89% /home Tiny wincey little bit of a disagreement going on there. Server is a MySQL box, I've had to keep removing binary logs due to disk space issues and lately this has been a pain. A quick look for other areas of disk usage on this partition showed the discrepency. Any particular ideas on what may be the cause? Only reference on Google was circa 1999 when deleting open files caused this to be demonstrated. df does update when I delete stuff today... Cheers, James

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Autumn ALUG Kit Meet at UEA
by Elisabeth 25 Sep '05

25 Sep '05

There is a note in my phone which says there should be a kit meet at UEA on 23 October, as mooted at the last monthly Moot. If there are no better suggestions or major objections from the assembled masses, I'll book a room next week. Are we going for the record for coffee makers again? And, of course, there will be Cake. And a prize for the most strange, complex, or amusing piece of working kit. And possibly an award for the person who fixes (or breaks) the most things during the afternoon :) e

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Foreign parts
by Bob Dove 24 Sep '05

24 Sep '05

Hi Folks, Greetings from Colonia Claudius. I know that the Wallsend = World's End is a funny - the 'real' World's End is in Chelsea, part of Londinium! I know you all know too that Wallsend is where Hadrian's wall ended! We all learnt at school that Hadrian built the wall to keep the Scots out, the truth of the matter is that there were probably as many gates through the wall as there were watch towers on it. To come through the gate (to trade) you had to pay a tax on your sale goods. Customs and Excise - good idea eh? Julius Caesar 'Veni, Vedi, Veci'? Nah, Veni and Vedi perhaps but he went home with the 'flu! Claudius' army came and found of course already Romanised Celtic tribes and Roman trading posts so the battles were probably not as extensive as the post Roman propaganda would have us believe!!! Alas, the Romans didn't have Linux... Cheers, Bob Dove.

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vnc through a firewall
by Peter 22 Sep '05

22 Sep '05

Does anyone know how to do this? I have a friend in another part of England who regularly wants help with how to do things in OO. So, most of the time I start up OO myself and work in parallel with him and talk him through it. But, he's not very sophisticated and often has trouble following, or even describing very accurately what he is seeing. Today was what led me to think we need another way, when for some mysterious reason printing a journal article he has written, in the approved format of 2 pages per sheet in landscape form, ran into problems. So I find myself saying, you see that icon with the little hand over the printer.... Very time consuming. I have set him up on broadband using a router, so there is a hardware firewall at his end, and of course, NAT. I have put Suse 9.2 in for him, so there is a software firewall as well. I would like to be able, securely, to run VNC and actually demonstrate what he has to do. If we didn't have the firewalls....it would be easy! But with the router, he doesn't have a public IP address - exactly why I made him get one, of course. Oh dear. I am not terribly sophisticated in this stuff, so if anyone can give a simple step by step account, would be very grateful. Regards Peter

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